road-to-recovery-94-blog

[road-to-recovery-94-blog]

I love autumn for a lot of reasons. I love the food. I love the fashion. I love the weather. But I mostly just love the vibe of magic that hangs in the air. Whether it’s the golden leaves against the crisp blue morning sky, or the sudden strange wind under a full moon, it’s there. The magic is there.

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[road-to-recovery-94-blog]

Smokey sunset over Mount Rainier.

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Shout out to everybody who’s trying to get their life together. Working on yourself is the hardest part of life. The rest comes after.

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Listening to your body is so much important than listening to diet culture

[road-to-recovery-94-blog]

[road-to-recovery-94-blog]

Recovery.

Shall we talk about this? New blog, new blog name and all.

I’ll introduce myself. I’m Lauren. I’m 23. I have a fiancé, Clint. Together we have a little girl, Eden. I really enjoy reading, PC gaming and binging Netflix/Amazon shows.

I’ve had a... rough start in life, we’ll say. My mental health sucked growing up. Really sucked. Basically I was a depressed, anxious, suicidal, self harming wreck for the longest time. I was unable to go to school from age 11 due to this. Which also meant no qualifications.

Having my daughter was a turnaround point for me. I had purpose. I had someone who brought me absolute joy. I had someone that inspired me to be better. I’ve been working on getting myself ‘sorted’ since then. There’s been ups and downs along the way. A big moment for me was leaving the house regularly because Eden started nursery (Jan 2016). I went to my GP to get support with this because honestly my anxiety about leaving the house at all was awful. But I kept on at it and soon became comfortable with it. It’s now something that I only really feel anxiety about when returning to the school run after breaks for half term and end of term. But I always feel fine after the first day back.

Fast forward to now. Eden starts full time school in September. I’m a stay at home mum; that’s a lot of free time! So I made a step that I’ve wanted to for a few years now. I applied for college to do an English GCSE (to start with). I had my interview last month and official enrolment is next week. Then I’ll start in September. I can’t believe I’m at this point. I’ve been so desperate to get here and now I finally am. I’ve worked so hard to get myself feeling mentally well enough for this. I’m damn proud of the work until this point and so excited for the year ahead.

The weight. I’ve put on weight. The anxiety about leaving the house was obviously part of that. If someone isn’t leaving the house, chances are they aren’t exercising much. I’ve also always been a very emotional eater. So I tend to eat a lot when I’m down in the dumps. Then the addition of birth control. I started using the Nexplanon implant in Nov 2013. So those things combined... I’ve just piled on weight. Tuesday just gone, I weighed in at 268lbs. The higher I have ever been. Before that my highest recorded weight was 236lbs. At that point I put the effort in to lose weight and dipped below the 200’s. All healthy and legit. I did it then so I have faith that I can do it again.

General mental health... I mentioned the self harm above. It’s not something I ‘track’ for how well I’m doing, but I believe I’ve managed no self harm at all this year. And very very little in the past couple of years. Which is a vast improvement from younger days and it being a multiple times a day thing. The depression side of things... I can say I’m not depressed right now. I’ve had a dip or two this year, but nothing major. Mostly happy these days. It’s glorious. The anxiety I’m working on getting under control. Just taking positive steps forward in all aspects really.

So yeah, that’s it! That’s this blog for me right now, I want it to be about my ‘recovery’. Getting myself as happy and healthy as possible. Both physically and mentally. And just about my journey along the way.

Please come say hey if you’re in a similar place with any of this. I’d love to have friends that are understanding of what’s going on. Get a bit of mutual support between folk. 🙂

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[road-to-recovery-94-blog]

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Went and picked up a Charge 2 today. Pretty excited to start using it. Especially the sleep stuff - always fascinated me with my old Fitbit.

[road-to-recovery-94-blog]

Like or reblog if you’re a healthy weight loss/fitness blog.

Especially those that started around 265lbs or are about that now.

I’m looking to find some motivation and inspiration. I’ve piled on weight due to a few reasons (depression leading to binge/emotional eating and lack of activity, birth control, etc.) and now I’m finally getting myself back on track and part of that is wanting to get my physical health on track too. 🙂

I’ve used tumblr as part of this journey before - I lost 35lbs several years ago using this, MyFitnessPal and a Fitbit flex. Looking to upgrade and grab myself an Alta HR this time around.

Please feel free to say hey!